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Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Dutch film magazine Schokkend Nieuws (‘Shocking News’) donated various Dutch fanzines and genre publications to the Collection Centre of the EYE Filmmuseum.

Horror, science fiction, fantasy and cultmovies are often overlooked - if not frowned upon - so we are very happy to work with the EYE Collection Centre to create a complete collection of Dutch fanzines and genre publications. Over the years, Schokkend Nieuws has developed into a professional bi-monthly publication, publishing many exclusive interviews, reviews and background stories, but in 1992 our magazine sprang from the depths of Dutch fanzine culture. And we’re proud of it!

One of the first Dutch publications to write seriously about horror and science fiction movies was Drab. Dutch film journalist Peter Kuipers and publisher Rob Faber created the magazine in 1973. Apparently there were sixteen editions published until 1980. Drab was a publication of the Stichting Styx (later renamed Stichting Drab - ’Stichting bevordering Horror & Fantasy’) in Amsterdam and it was also devoted to fantastic literature. Drab organised the Horror 73 festival in De Brakke Grond (1973) en Angstendam 700 in November 1975, which consisted of two all-night movie marathons in the Cinétol movie theatre, with films by Roger Corman, Terence Fisher and so forth. Angstendam 700 also organised a writing contest for short horror and fantasy stories and featured lectures, an exhibition and horror theatre.

Horrorscoop was created in March 1981. Its founder was 17-year-old Barry Raaymakers from Oosterhout. Raaijmakers was a young fan of the Universal Horror movies, which were shown on Dutch and German television, and inspired by foreign genre publications like Fangoria and l’Écran Fantastique. Horrorscope started out as an amateurish, small print, photocopied magazine, but managed to professionalise and grow. By the mid-eighties Horrorscoop was published quarterly, had about 250 subscribers, and was distributed to specialty film shops in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Collaborators like Ruben Drukker, Oliver Kerkdijk, Han Weevers, Bart Oosterhoorn, Fir Suidema, Mike Lebbing, Mark van den Tempel, Phil van Tongeren and Erique J. Rebel helped professionalise its content. Horrorscoop covered events like Wim Vink’s Benelux Horror & Science-Fiction Smalfilm Festival in Tiel and Jan Doense’s Weekend of Terror film festival. The magazine also managed to get exclusive interviews with directors like Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Dario Argento, Clive Barker, Sam Raimi en Christopher Lee.

The eighties and the beginning of the nineties were a good period for fanzines. Peter Zirschky, lead singer of punk band Funeral Oration and head of the Stichting Horror Relations, ran a horror mail order company and published two magazines: Horror Relations, probably in 1987, and Savage Cinema in March 1988. Both magazines were written in English and filled with enthusiastic reviews like: ‘Night Train To Terror is a mess. BUT, it’s a very BLOODY mess and will certainly appeal to gore-hounds.’ That same year, graphic designer Bart Oosterhoorn created GoreHound (1988-1990): a completely self-written, self-designed and self-published free magazine. Its five editions were devoted to the different editions of Weekend of Terror, but they also contained articles on artists like Robert Longo, Félicien Rops, Antoine Wiertz, books and other fanzines.

When Raaijmakers decided to stop in 1992, no less than three new Dutch genre publications were announced. Cinéville never came to be, but both Camera Obscura and Schokkend Nieuws started fruitful careers. Camera Obscura was published in Groningen from 1992 to 2000 by Mike Lebbing en Michael Kopijn, and focused on European cult cinema and Italian genre movies. Camera Obscura published extensive interviews with Dario Argento, Umberto Lenzi, Ruggero Deodato and Jean Rollin, and featured articles by ex-Horrorscoop-writers Oliver Kerkdijk, Hans Peter Christen en Han Weevers.

Schokkend Nieuws was founded by Jan Doense, Phil van Tongeren en Bart Oosterhoorn, soon joined by Parool film critic Bart van der Put. It started in black and white and on an A5-format, but became a full colour tabloid in 2002. It has been published bimonthly since 2011. Last week we released our 128th edition. It contains a long 10-page series of articles about De Johnsons (Rudolf van den Berg, 1992), one of the most successful Dutch horror movies. Cherished by the fans of the evil god ‘Xangadix’, but almost forgotten. Not by Schokkend Nieuws of course - we interviewed Van den Berg and star of the movie Monique van de Ven - and not by the Collection Centre of the EYE Filmmuseum: I was able to do a lot of the research for this issue at the institute – with the kind help of Nita Smit and Piet Dirkx.

Nita, Piet and the other collaborators at EYE are now also the keepers of some of the most obscure and fascinating Dutch fanzines: Horrorscoop, Savage Cinema, GoreHound, Camera Obscura, Schokkend Nieuws – all complete. And let’s not forget: the only eight editions that were ever published of Bad Taste (Geleen, 1993) and the extremely sleazy complete WOOF! (2014-2017) collection from Groningen. We are still looking to complete the collection with Drab, Horror Relations and GoreHound, but EYE now collectes a lot of research material on Dutch genre filmmaking and fan culture to be studied – and enjoyed.

Earlier this year, in January, students of the MA ‘Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image’ were presented with four different case studies. Each project was introduced by a specialist from EYE, under whose supervision a group of four to five students would dedicate their time for the duration of four weeks. The following report describes one of those projects: Moving Pictures.

Rien Hagen standing inside his installation, 1995 (one of five available photographs that depict the actual installation as it once was).

Moving Pictures

Moving Pictures is the name of an installation by Rien Hagen, which was on display, together with two other installations, during the two-week exhibition 500 Years of Film, in the Theater aan het Spui in November 1995. The exhibition was organized by the Cinematheek Haags Filmhuis, which hosted an accompanying two-day conference, inviting a variety of speakers who, through a series of lectures and debates, reflected on the state of cinema as it celebrated its centenary.

Hagen’s installation was inspired by, or even based on, Anne Hollander’s book Moving Pictures. Hollander, an art historian, gave permission to use the title of her book for the installation and was present herself during the conference and opening of the exhibition. In her book, Hollander describes the birth and rise of cinema not merely as a technological invention, but above all as the continuation of a specific form of imagery that was established by Northern-European painters. She argues that these painters suggested, by using a variety of techniques, that there was a world beyond the physical frame of the painting, resulting in a form of imagery that can or should be considered proto-cinematic. By projecting some of these proto-cinematic paintings in conjunction with famous excerpts from films, Hagen wanted to highlight the connection between proto- and contemporary cinema in his installation.

Remnants of the Past

Rough first sketch of the installation, the final screens would measure 11 metres wide and 4 metres high.

Our project evolved around the question how such an installation, which now merely exists in parts and on paper, could be best preserved, effectively enabling the possibility of a future reconstruction that mimics, or at least approaches, the experience of the past visitor. The following sources were available to us from the outset:

- 192 framed slides.

- Over 300 slide duplicates.

- 10 cans of 16mm film positives.

- 4 cans of 16mm film, A-B negative rolls (8 rolls in total).

- 2 Hi 8 tapes, which were solely used to record 8 tracks of audio.

- 1 compact cassette.

- A post-production script.

- A printed sequence of all images, moving and still (sometimes referred to as a timeline).

- 5 photographs of the installation (from 1995).

Framed slides, originals and backups.

The photographs of the installation provided an entry point for our research. The installation consisted of four dark transparent screens, which allowed backlit projection, creating a square room which could be entered from one of the corners. Each screen, or wall, could have still images projected onto it at four different locations. Besides these still images, the photographs made clear that film could be projected at the centre of each screen. This indicated that there would have been at least sixteen slide projectors, four per screen, and four 16mm film projectors, one behind each screen. A schemata, acquired at a later stage of our research, confirmed this setup.

Schemata of the installation showing various projector locations.

The framed slides, which were used in the actual installation, bear handwritten annotations that indicate trough a letter on which wall each slide was projected (A, B, C or D). Next to this letter a number was written, ranging from 1 to 4, specifying the exact location on the wall where the image was to be projected.

Example of a series of slides which were all projected on the same wall. Because of the handwritten annotations, it was decided to preserve these slides as a whole, including the frames.

The 16mm positives did not contain many images, some rolls were even completely void. It was to be expected that the actual film rolls used for the installation would contain a lot of black material, since there were four different film projectors, and often there would be no film projected at all during the runtime of the installation. However, none of the prints would match the sequence of images, as provided by the film related documentation, at a specific wall,. The A-B negatives proved to be more promising. There were four cans in total (now eight, for the rolls have been re-canned individually), which all included an A and B roll. The cans were labelled A to D, and the images on the negatives did in fact correspond to the image locations as provided by the timeline. There was however a slight discrepancy between the timestamps in the timeline and the ones provided by the Steenbeck’s counter while viewing the material. Nevertheless, it is very likely that the A-B negatives were in fact used to create the final prints that were projected. The negatives were in excellent condition and would only need dust removal before being processed once more.

Several cans containing 16mm positives or A-B negative rolls.

The compact cassette contained three citations of poems which would accompany specific images while the installation was running. The cassette itself was not used during the installation and should be considered working material. However, the Hi 8 tapes (one being a backup) were used for the installation. This carrier, as we later learned, was chosen because of two reasons. First, the production team simply had access to this specific technology at that time, which made the choice cost efficient. Second, this carrier was able to contain eight separate sound tracks, delivering stereo sound to each individual wall.

The Tascam DA-88 (left), which was used to produce and read the Hi 8 tapes (right) of the installation. Nico Bunnik, who originally worked on the sound for Hagen’s installation, maintained the unit in his studio and was able to digitize the Hi 8 tape for us twenty-two years later.

Cataloguing and Scanning

In order to preserve both material and concept, it was decided to catalogue all slides, including detailed descriptions in EYE’s collection database. There were over 300, non-framed, acetate positive duplicate prints of the slides. For the sake of preservation, all duplicates have been transferred to acid-free folders, while the framed slides that were broken had their glass removed and its folder cleaned thoroughly by a cotton swab. In consultation with EYE specialists it was decided that the originally used slides would remain in their frames, for the annotations on these frames are valuable to the concept and should be preserved as well. Logically, the duplicates were used for scanning purposes, they had never been used in the installation and proved to be in better overall condition.

The time-consuming task of organizing over hundreds of slides. Connecting each slide to a specific wall and position of the installation proved to be a daunting task.

Organized and catalogued slides, transferred to acid-free folders, ready for their trip to the vault.

Connecting the Dots

Even though all content-material seemed to be available, many questions remained, especially concerning the physical and technical setup of the installation. Dealing with a media art-installation, the logical next step was to contact the artist himself, not only to gather missing technological information, but also to focus on the ethics that are involved during a possible re-installation of the work. In other words, to discover and determine what could be considered the essential characteristics of the installation. Rien Hagen suggested to also contact Gerard Holthuis and Nico Bunnik, who were involved with the installation’s production and sound, respectively.

During a variety of interviews a great deal of information was gathered which allowed us to fill in most of the gaps that were still there. Besides specific technical details on, for example, the way in which sound and images were synced or why and how different lenses were used for the slide projectors, Holthuis was able to provide us with a much more detailed production script than we originally had access to. This addition made it possible to finalize an exact timeline.

Excerpt from the production script as provided by Gerard Holthuis. Besides connecting sound and image, it also specifies the location on the screen/wall where an image was to be projected.

Regarding a possible reconstruction of the installation opinions differed. According to Bunnik a reinstallation should ideally be fully analogue, especially the slide projectors, for he identifies the analogue setup as a unique attribute that added to the overall experience of the artwork. In contrast, Hagen and Holthuis argued that if they had had the means in 1995 to produce the installation digitally, they would have chosen to do so. To them, the noise produced by the analogue apparatus was distractive and interfered with the overall experience. Hagen defines specific aspects, like the dimensions of the screens and projections, the fact that the apparatus was hidden from the inside of the installation and the actual content as key components that should not be tempered with.

It’s logical that the content plays a defining role, but to what extend are its delivering mechanisms hands-off? If an artist states that his or her intended goals would have been better served by newer technologies, should one embrace such alterations and implement them in future editions? One might argue that such a deviation automatically leads to a different work of art. Following a similar, yet slightly different, line of argumentation one could assert that especially now, in an era where the digital has seemingly taken over, a return to the analogue apparatus would add an extra dimension to the historical exploration of cinematographic aspects as was investigated by Hagen’s installation in the first place.

The difference between preserving a film and a multimedia installation is primarily that an installation demands the safeguarding of a concept as well. A film may already be accompanied by a variety of film related material, such as posters, catalogues, scripts and photographs, to name a few. A multimedia installation, such as the one described above, potentially multiplies this accumulation of related materials and inscribes them with a certain necessity. Not only do they add something external to its subject, they may provide specific context that is crucial for a possible future reestablishment of the work, its body and meaning.

Nine years ago Catherine Cormon, the current head of the collections management department, had a dream to obtain a winding bench that would be suitable to deal with compromised and decomposed film materials. The purpose of such a table is to reduce exposure to noxious gasses that are created by both acetate and nitrate film materials and a purpose-built winding table would then allow staff and volunteers to work in relative safety.

The move of the collections department from Vijfhuizen to the Collection Centre has given the department the opportunity to finally commission a customized ventilated winding table. This commission was given to local craftsman Kees Malingré of Profgear who specializes in building equipment for audiovisual uses such as our winding bench.

before

after

To make the new table Kees reused materials from an old winding table and repurposed the plates, winding mechanism and the meter counter/ruler. He then created the body of the table from scratch and attached a Plexiglas hood to protect the operator. Kees also designed a ventilation system in the back of the table to suck the noxious air and filters the gasses up a separate ventilation shaft.

As well as installing the new ventilation system Kees added a frame counter and reader to the table. The counter reader was an old broken machine that was fixed especially for the table and the counter mechanism was also repurposed from another broken table. One of the greatest (and funniest) features of the table is that the counter mechanism can be switched in and out of the path of the winding film by simply rotating plates. This movement allows the operator the freedom to handle delicate films in the way they best see fit without encourage further perforation damage.

The key lesson learnt in the creation of this table is that old tables and broken technology can be repurposed for future film handling materials and technology. Therefore, it is necessary to hold onto those bits that can help in the creation of new interesting and helpful winding tables and more.

While a new ventilated winding table might not be the most exciting thing to happen to most people, for us in a the collection management department this is a great day. We will be able to better manage and process our materials in a safer environment as well as having a new shiny toy to play with. We thanks Kees for his diligent work and we look forward to attending to our ‘nasty’ nitrate collection in relative safety.

This summer, Fleur van der Woude and Juliet Baines carried out a challenging conservation treatment of a huge, beautifully designed film poster from 1931 in the film related collections of the EYE Filmmuseum. The poster was in a terrible condition when it arrived in the conservation studio, but it returned to the museum fit for handling and display!

Fleur and Juliet are post graduate book and paper conservators in training at the department of Conservation and Restoration of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). This blog post will take you through their experiences and will touch upon some of the challenges they encountered.

Unfolding the folds

The poster arrived at the conservation studio folded. Due to tears and brittleness, it was impossible to handle the paper without causing more damage. When carefully unfolded the poster turned out to measure an impressive 240 cm in width and 160 cm in height. The lithograph depicts a lady in a bright red jumpsuit kicking a grey cooking pot. The text on the poster is all printed in black. The use of only three colours gives the poster a minimalistic look while the composition is lively due to the body movement of the lady in red. The poster is from a French comedy called ‘Nicole et sa Vertu’ that was released in 1931. The poster itself dates from around the same time. To make handling and viewing of this attractive poster possible, a conservation treatment had to be carried out. Tearing of the paper meant the poster was now in four parts while it was initially compiled of two halves that could be attached using a pasting strip in the middle. However, the pasting strip showed no sign of it ever being used, indicating the two halves of this poster were never adhered together. Therefore, the decision was made to keep the two halves apart. The size of the two halves, both 120x160 cm, still meant the conservation treatment was a challenge for the two conservators, demanding a creative use of tools, space and workforce.

The film poster as it arrived in the studio. The paper was folded and due to brittleness handling was impossible without causing more damage.

Exciting times for ‘the lady in red’

First, the paper was washed to remove degradation products and strengthen the paper. Next, a lining of Japanese paper was adhered to the back of the poster using wheat starch paste. For lining of the poster a flat surface was needed. None of the tables available in the studio turned out to be big enough. Particle board was cut to size and covered with a sheet of Melinex®, a transparent polyester foil, to create a big enough flat surface to work on. After a first lining, Japanese paper and starch paste was used to fill in missing areas and reinforce tears. Finally, a second lining was applied.

The Japanese paper used for the lining weighs 6 grams per square meter, which is extremely thin. In comparison, the paper generally used in printers weighs 80 grams per square meter. The decision to line the poster with this type of paper was based on previous conservation treatments on film posters in Eye’s collection carried out by Art Conservation Europe. These posters were machine-lined with 6 grams Japanese paper and had gained a lot of strength while maintaining their original thickness and flexibility as much as possible. Also, the writing or printing on the back of these posters is still visible through the thin lining paper.

The choice for lining by hand with extremely thin Japanese paper in combination with the size of the poster, meant the lining had to be made up out of thirty smaller sheets of paper instead of one single sheet. After the first lining, a second lining was applied to prevent undesirable tension because the orientation of the paper fibres of the second lining was positioned perpendicular to the orientation of the fibres in the first lining.

The sink for oversized objects in the shared conservation studio of UvA and the Rijksmuseum proved to come in handy during wet treatment

To apply the pasted Japanese paper to the back of the poster, a Japanese lining technique was used. The lining paper is placed on a flat surface and with a special, traditional Japanese brush, the thin paste is applied evenly. Then, a corner of the pasted paper is lifted and adhered to a wooden stick. The stick is used to lift the paper and to place the paper onto the object. While one hand holds the stick horizontally, the other hand positions the edge of the pasted lining paper on the back of the object. Because of the extremely thin and fragile lining paper, a second set of hands was needed to accurately position the paper. But even with two pairs of hands, the two conservators could be heard whispering to one another, wishing for a third pair!

After drying under light weights to flatten the paper, retouching was carried out using water colour pencils. The water colour pencil was only applied in the areas where the Japanese paper lining was visible through a hole in the original poster. Here, the white Japanese paper was retouched to a yellowish brown close to the colour of the original paper to make the repair less visible. In consultation with Soeluh van den Berg, curator and head of the film related collections at EYE, it was decided to be modest in retouching and allow the age of the material to be visible. The same goes for the brown chequered pattern caused by degradation of the folding lines, as well as the discolorations caused by fatty components in the printing ink created in areas where ink and paper were in direct contact when folded. Both patterns of discoloration are still clearly visible on the poster. Removing them would require a more invasive approach using bleaching techniques that would weaken the paper in these areas even more. Although, by some viewers, these areas with stronger discolouration might be experienced as distracting, they are part of the history of the object as they show what the poster has been through.

A white haze is visible on the red ink caused by fatty components from the black ink. The fatty components were able to transfer when the poster was folded.

A bright future in a dark archive

The poster is now stored in the archive of EYE. In the archival storage, a stable climate of around 18 °C and a relative humidity of around 50% is maintained to slow down the degradation of the materials. Light is only turned on when staff members need to handle objects in storage. The poster is stored in a folder made of acid-free cardboard with sheets of TST® interleaving between the two halves of the poster. This prevents more discolouration as the interleaving keeps the printing ink from being in direct contact with the paper on top. The folder is kept in a big drawer where the object is stored flat. After conservation, this poster has a future again, and it has helped two young paper conservators to gain more experience in dealing with a fragile and oversized object.

This year, me and several other interns worked together with Silent Film curator Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, with the goal to completely inspect, identify and register the films to the EYE Collection database and from there, see what choices needed to be made in terms of preservation, restoration and presentation. The start of this project and process of nitrate identification were already discussed in an earlier blogpost. Now that we have finished registering all the nitrate elements of this collection, let’s discuss our findings, provide you background information on the origins of this collection and unveil the treasures we encountered!

Biographical background and naming the collectionThis collection originally belonged to Mr. van der Molen, and was donated to the EYE Filmmuseum back in 2013 by an acquaintance of the van der Molen family, Gerard Manshanden. Mr. Van der Molen was a film projectionist and collector from the Dutch city Den Helder; where he worked as projectionist for the marine until the onset of WWII. Generally speaking, he mostly created personal film screenings for private clients, ranging from showing films at children’s parties to screening more ‘erotic’-oriented materials for adults. After he passed away, Gerard Manshanden, an acquaintance from the local film theatre, was askedto sort out the large collection of films which were kept in the house and several garages.

The collection consists of safety materials of all kinds; mostly erotic films from the 1970s, but also newsreels, amateur films, 35mm films and reductions on 16mm (both fiction and non-fiction). Our initial acquisition entry mentions items ranging from “Laurel and Hardy” to “Waterskiing people in Bali”. Among those (roughly) 800 cans, approximately 150 cans turned out to contain nitrate stock. All of these materials were delivered to the archive at separate times: the first items came to EYE in 2013, whereas the last ones arrived in 2015, when another garage belonging to mr. van der Molen was discovered.

All the nitrate materials known within this collection have now been processed and registered. Further down, you will find a list of the silent films from this nitrate collection.

Pictures of the delivery of the cans to EYE Filmmuseum’s former location Vijfhuizen, back in 2013.

Findings, statistics and conclusions regarding this collection

Though, as mentioned, the complete collection including the safety material consisted of an estimated 800 cans, we assessed and looked through 150 cans of what was considered to be nitrate materials. From these 150 cans we found and have registered 88 unique or individual titles into the database Collection EYE. 85% of these titles have been identified, while 15% remain unidentified. The nitrate films are mostly silent: 70% vs. 30% sound films. The films are mostly fictional; 67% fiction vs. 33% non-fiction. Around 55% of the films were either complete or ‘complete enough’, and the length of these films varies anywhere between very short fragments, up to a complete film of six reels.

In terms of origins, most of the films were from the 1910s; 33% to be exact. The peak seems to be 1918; with 7 titles produced in this year. 25% is from the 1920s, and 19% from the 1930s. The oldest film we looked at was from 1905 (the Pathé title Les petits vagabonds) and the ‘youngest’ films we found in this batch were from 1959 and they were mostly Polygoon journals and fragments from safety colour films, such as The Nun Story with Audrey Hepburn. Most of the silent films were also in colour, often tinted, but several also containing toning and stencilling or a combination of tinting and black and white. Regarding their national origins, the films mainly were from the United States (around 40%) followed by France (19%), the Netherlands (14%), and Germany (10%). We also found films from Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Belgium and Great-Britain.

One particularly interesting example regarding the origins of the films, is a German-Austrian co-production; between Messter film (based in Berlin, and one of the largest film producers and distributors at the time), and Sascha Film, one of the main Austrian film producers in the silent era. However, the collaboration between the two and the use of their logo together on the intertitles was not something the curators had seen before and seemed quite unique. This film was also specifically compelling because it features Henny Porten, one of the major silent film stars from Germany. The film was identified as Gräfin Küchenfee (with the Dutch copy title being De keukenmeid als gravin) from 1918, and is written by Robert Wiene (of Das Cabinet des dr Caligari-fame), who is often also wrongly credited as this film’s director. The story features Porten in a double role: she plays the kitchen maid/aspiring actress Karoline Blume, trying to copy the behaviour of the countess she works for in order to study for a role. The part of this countess Gyllenhand is of course also taken up by Porten and strikingly, we see her in a comic role in a story of ‘mistaken identity’; a truly fascinating find in this collection.

The Sascha Film and Messter Film logos/initials are visible at the top of the frame / Henny Porten in her double role as both the kitchen maid/aspirational actress Karolina Blume and the Countess Gyllenhand in Gräfin Küchenfee (1918)

In terms of physical condition, some cans contained rust and several reels were affected by nitrate decomposition, mould, bacteria and in a few exceptional cases also such heavy decay (in its last stage) that the parts of the reel could not be saved, though overall the films were in very good condition. Regarding genre and themes, the films also vary considerably. Most of the films with USA origins seem to be comedies, such as Mustered Out (1920, formerly presumed lost) featuring Charlie Chaplin imitator Billy West, two Alice Laugh-O-Grams, a romantic comedy about newlyweds titled The Honeymoon Pact (1915) and also two films with a role for Cameo the Dog! In Asleep at the Switch (1923) Cameo plays checkers with Ben Turpin, while in in Nip and Tuck (1923) he cheats at a game of cards. Also from French territory came several comedies: the Max Linder comedy Pédicure par amour (1908), Le homard (1912) featuring Léonce Perret, the trick film La villa aux surprises (1912) about a thief being ‘locked in’ by the house he is trying to rob, and a compilation of several Willy Sanders films (titled De snaackse avonturen van Willie). Several American animations were also discovered, such as Colonel Pepper’s Mobilized Farm (1917), Inklings (1924) and the Mutt and Jeff animation ‘Lots of Water’ (1925).

Behind the scenes photograph (provided by Steve Massa) of the ‘lost’ film Mustered Out (1920), featuring Chaplin-imitator Billy West

Several westerns appeared in the collection as well, such as South of Santa Fe (1919) featuring Texas Guinan (one of the first movie cowgirls) and we also found (in a heavily decayed reel) a very short fragment from one reel of the 18-chapter adventure serial Hands Up (1918), which is sadly still considered lost and from the promising poster-material, it seems sad we found these fragments in a heavily decayed reel, leaving it only up to the imagination what else could or might have been there before.

Regarding non-fiction, we found a beautifully (pink) tinted and stencilled 1912 Pathé film named Printemps fleuri (already mentioned in our last post), several (excerpts of) travelogues, a film featuring the crowning of a sultan in the Dutch Indies, and a film documenting an ice skating match in Den Helder in 1916, the city in North-Holland where Mr. van der Molen lived.

Also striking are several films featuring themes that could be considered ‘exotic’ or featuring (from our contemporary point of view) eccentric elements: Die Kaukasierin (1917) is about a detective Joe Deebs (Max Landa) trying to uncover the truth behind a girl from ‘Caucasia’, the deceased wife of an engineer who turns out to have mysteriously faked her own death to elope with someone else, while in Romance and Brass Tacks (1918) we see a woman idealising a Russian violinist and fantasising about becoming Russian princess, only to be faced by ‘reality’ when she discovers the manners of this man are actually very far removed from her own romantic ideals. In the travelogue film Kudowa: Een heilzaam oord voor hartlijdenden (origins unclear), we are presented with the‘healing’ radioactive waters for those visiting the spa resort Kudowa, while in the Danish (formerly lost) drama I Opiumets Magt, (1918) one of the characters tricks his prospective father-in-law into trying opium, with the intention of making him an addict and inheriting his fortune. The on-screen smoking and subsequent hallucinations of his deceased daughter, lead him into despair.

A woman imagining herself a Russian ‘princess’ in Romance and Brass Tacks (1918)

Opium smoking in I Opiumets Magt (1918)

Despite our efforts and the high percentage of identified titles, some films still remain unidentified, even though we do hope that we will learn more about them in the near future. One interesting example is Het geheimzinnige huis (given title), of which the story was not entirely clear to us, as the film was incomplete and the beginning reel(s) seemed to be missing, the two reels of this film we found featured (again) intriguing elements: a secret passageway leading from one house to the next, doppelgängers, several cases of ‘unmasking’, a safe that can be accessed from a secret corridor, a painting that figures a secret door, resulting in a mysterious tone to it, not quite in German expressionist style, but almost like a film noir avant la lettre. Also in terms of origins it seems hard to determine where this film is from: no indications of setting, backgrounds, streets and looks of the actors gave us a clear indication or ‘marker’ of production country.Frames from the mysterious film ‘Het geheimzinnige huis’

Next to several of these unidentified films, we also had to register about 10 cans as ‘collective’ cans, containing small bits and pieces of loose (unidentified) fragments that did not seem to belong to any of the other films we viewed. In some cases, these fragments consisted of just one frame, while in other they were short reels of up to 75 metres. For us it is important to keep these fragments, because EYE’s collection policy requires that all nitrate materials which are not fully decayed will be kept. Secondly, because some of these might still be identified later on, if someone wants to return to these cans and do more research and thirdly, interesting fragments might be used for EYE’s Bits & Pieces compilations, in which new compilations are made from unidentified fragments that otherwise would not really be shown, re-used or actively preserved or restored in any other way. Nonetheless, all of the films and also these ‘collective’ cans have been registered with their own entry in the database Collection EYE on both ‘filmography’ and ‘copy’ level, as well as with a full report in the curator’s database.

Dealing with cans of loose ‘fragments’, often unidentifiable

Complete list of the silent films and future preservation projects

Please note that this list only contains the silent film titles in this collection. The films are listed in chronological order, and the titles in brackets are ‘given' titles. All films are positive prints, identified and either complete or ‘complete enough, unless stated otherwise.

Several upcoming projects have already been initiated. The Hungarian film A munkászubbony (1915), featuring famous Hungarian actor Gyula Hegedűs will be sent to our colleagues at the Hungarian National Film Archive. This was one of the first discoveries back when we started identifying the films in February and was subsequently picked up by Hungarian media. Two previously presumed ‘lost’ Danish films, I Opiumets Magt (1918) and Gorki (1912, an intriguing yet incomplete detective drama) will be preserved in collaboration with our colleagues at the Danish Film Institute. Jane’s Declaration of Independence (1915) will be also restored in collaboration with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the city in which parts of this film were shot. As we only recently finished identifying this whole collection, we hope that many other institutions will follow in collaborating with us in preserving and showing these films, so hopefully some of these titles will be screened in a theatre close to you in the near future!

Conclusively, it is amazing to consider that these kinds of collections are still being found to this day, containing films of over a hundred years old and some of which are often still in very good conditions. Though film collectors (and especially those who own nitrate film) might slowly be becoming a ‘dying breed’, our work in processing and identifying nitrate films is nowhere near done. Almost 80% of silent films are considered lost, but collections like this one give us hope that some of those lost films might still be found today!

Finally, we would like to thank the family van der Molen and Gerard Manshanden for donating this collection to the EYE Filmmuseum, and also express our gratitude to Annike Kross, and the student interns Nicholas Avedisian-Cohen, Aleksas Gilaitis, Olivia Stutz and Julie De Wispelaere for all their hard work in helping us identify and register this collection.

The biggest and longest running silent film festival of the world hosts more than a thousand guests in its immens theater, and is also the place where the international silent film crowd gets together to watch silent films with live music, from 9AM till after midnight. There are daily musical masterclasses, book launches and presentations by archive specialists.

EYE will also present a ‘dialogue’ on Monday (Oct. 2nd) about the recently acquired Van der Molen/Manshanden nitrate collection. The collection has already drawn international attention since the first weeks of its registration, through the discovery of the lost Hungarian film A Munkazsubbony from 1914.

The yearly Desmet Collection screening is called 'For a Better Vision' and is dedicated to films about ‘blindness’. In addition, also our recently discovered and restored film Petite Simone (FR, 1918) will be screened for the first time.

The other EYE films are spread among the other sections of the festival, like the European Westerns, and mainly the ‘Nasty Women’ where we have 16 films!

Piles and piles of dusty ‘banana’ boxes stacked on 6 pallets, handwritten scribbles and stickers: Pretty much every archivist’s nightmare awaited me on the first day of my internship at the EYE collection center. I was taken on to assist experimental film curator Simona Monizza on the rather extraordinary (for EYE standards) Peter Rubin collection. Consisting of mostly VHS (and Super VHS) tapes, photographic slides, audio cassettes, an immense amount of documents but also some 16mm reels and even floppy disks, this project is outside the EYE’s comfort zone. This collection was donated to the EYE by the Amsterdam VJ academy in 2016 since it seemed like a logical home considering Peter Rubin’s film collection is already stored at the EYE. The second week (of my four month long internship) is coming to an end, and this blogpost is to share with you the progression of the challenging Peter Rubin collection.

Before I dive into the progress of this collection, some words about Peter Rubin and his work. Rubin was born in 1941 in the U.S.A. and studied filmmaking at the New York University. In 1968 Rubin moves to Amsterdam where he continues his career as a filmmaker. In 1976 he starts working for Holland Experimental Film (HEF) until well into the 1980’s. The 80’s were the real turning point for Rubin’s career as he digresses from film and enters the glitchy wonderland that is VHS. It was then that Rubin started working at the infamous Amsterdam club Mazzo as their in-house VJ (Video Jockey). Rubin worked 7 days a week at the Mazzo producing live video shows everyday until Mazzo finally closed its doors in 1989. At that point Peter Rubin’s career was at its highest point and it was then that Rubin started VJing in Germany in the Techno collectives Mayday and Love Parade. He worked closely with the renowned German DJ Westbam producing the collection of music videos “A Practicing Maniac at Work”. At the time he still kept Amsterdam as his base and also worked in several parties at the Panama and Melkweg and raves like Immortality and Awakenings. He lived most his life in Amsterdam but soon before his death moved to Berlin until he passed away in 2015. After his death the VJ academy with the help of his family and friends managed to collect all his work and belongings which is now in the possession of the EYE.

For this project we have decided to focus on Rubin’s VJ work in the 1980’s and 1990’s, as we see it as the core of this collection, and assess the overlaps between his film and VJ practice. Once the research phase is done, the goal is to preserve and digitize a number of VHS tapes we find critical and eventually be able to reconstruct one of his shows. But before we get to that, we have to sort out the collection we acquired from the VJ academy which is what we are focusing our efforts on at this moment. The collection arrived at the EYE in boxes Rubin put together himself with his written notes on them. These boxes contained his works as well as a lot of his personal belongings; from postcards to sweaters to an entire boxes of taped sports championships (see figure 2), VHS tapes with anything related to 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, and it is tapes like these which prove to be one of the main problematics of this project.

Figure 2. Euro and World Cup Soccer championship tapes

The first two weeks consisted of a lot of inventorying, sorting and carrying boxes. The pallets we focused on were those which contain boxes of VHS tapes (namely pallets 1 and 3). Each pallet consists of ~20 boxes and each box fits 69-72 tapes, so a total of ~2400 tapes and the boxes were given an individual number.

In the beginning of this process we were very thorough, giving an inventory number and cataloguing each tape in a spreadsheet. Each tape got a unique inventory number which indicated Peter Rubin (PR), the given box number and their given tape number. So the first tape of box 34 would indicate PR-34-001 (see figure 3). This strategy, although the most thorough, proved to be extremely time consuming. I could only get through 2 boxes in each day which meant working on each box for 3.5 hours nonstop. We found that a lot of tapes seemed entirely personal, movies he liked, sports matches and world news which meant a lot of work thoroughly inventorying tapes which would likely be discarded later in the process.

Figure 3. Box 34 inventoried with individual numbers

After an interview with Daan Nolen from the VJ academy which was illuminating on Peter Rubin’s and VJ workflow in general, we decided to change our strategy. Instead of inventorying each and every tape we decided to go through boxes and mark the tapes we thought would be most relevant and take photos to document everything (See Figure 4). The photos would then be sent to people who are more knowledgeable on Rubin’s work and then be checked to see if we missed marking any important tape in our selection. Of course this method runs the risk of missing something that could potentially be important but the limited time and funds do not allow a deeper investigation at this time. Our motto is: “When in doubt, mark it!”. This change of strategy proved to be faster and more efficient in terms of output and as I write this, we managed to go through all of the boxes with VHS tapes and can definitely say that we have a much clearer overview of what is in the VHS collection.

Figure 4. Tapes marked with the green dot as important.

The above process ran rather smoothly but there are some issues we faced which I will highlight in the following paragraphs. Firstly, a main issue we dealt with at this moment is deciphering what is on the tapes. Fortunately most tapes have some sort of identifiable text and from viewing some tapes we discovered that the text matches the content. The issues with the texts is that they range from a number, to an event name, or in a lot of cases a large amount of content information which at times is rather obscure (See figure 5). A number of tapes also contain pieces of paper, a lot of the time with what we discovered to be time codes relating to specific images (see figure 6). In time a lot of these texts became more and more clear. For example we found a number of “Barb” tapes, which in the beginning we thought referred to Barbie but later on I found out that they refer to a specific event series at the Panama in Amsterdam called “Barbarella”. Similarly a lot of tapes referred to an Elsa which I discovered refers to Elsa Wormeck a.k.a. Elsa for Toys, a VJ who worked with Rubin in the Love Parade parties and at the production company Mediamorph in Berlin. The abbreviations IMM refers to Immortality (a party in Amsterdam), NF refers to No Frontiers another event in the Netherlands, TJ to Tape Jockey and LP could refer to either Love Parade or Long play (a method of recording content on a tape which allows for more content in less space). Though these names and abbreviations have become clearer, some are still obscure, for example he used the abbreviation NG, ODY, SLUV and LIB a number of times and the name Jos is constantly reappearing but we do not know what and whom Rubin is referring to (if anyone has any idea do let us know).

Figure 5. Example of tape with a lot of content information.

Figure 6. Example of paper note with information inside tapes

Figure 7. IMM tapes referring to the Immortality parties

Furthermore another question, which is also a more ethical one, is what to do with all the content tapes we have received. We call content tapes, tapes which contain material directly recorded from television, either for inspiration or for entertainment, these tapes can also be referred to as “source” tapes. Being a VJ, Rubin relied heavily on not only the animators and technicians who worked with and for him, but a great part of his work process was taping footage directly from television. A lot of the time he would tape entire TV programs but then would copy an excerpt from them and would add it to a compilation tape, thus: Do we then keep the source tape (what we also call content tape) or simply the compilation tape? The line between the tapes he used for his work and the tapes he used for his personal entertainment is permeable and thin. This question is then followed up by another issue: Copyrights. A lot of these TV programs have different authors and owners which EYE does not have the rights to. Of course this is not a problem if the material will never be published or used but simply kept as a document of Rubin’s work flow, but their storing also requires space.

In the coming weeks we will continue inventorying and hopefully start the process of making some selections for digitization.

The use of self-adhesive plastic foils in architectural designs in the collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam (NL)

The researchers of the project Materials in Motion - a research project on animation artwork conservation - found a lot of self-adhesive plastic foils in EYE's collection of animation artwork. These plastic foils constitute a challenge for conservators. A reason to visit our collegues of Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam who struggle with the same material in their collection of design drawings. This blog post takes a closer look at examples from both collections.

Self-adhesive plastic foils, transparent sheets, tapes, markers. If a material is time-saving, inexpensive, easy to use, readily available and has a contemporary appeal, you can be assured it has been fully exploited by artists and designers. During our condition survey of the animation artwork in the collection of the EYE Film Museum, we regularly encounter self-adhesive foils adhered to both plastic as well as paper. We found several degradation phenomena that are typical for self-adhesive plastic foils such as shrinkage; sticky edges where the adhesive is exposed; loss of adhesion; wrinkling and bubbling. Example are the study for the film Between the Lights (1975) and the cel used in the production of Reversals (1972) by Karin Wiertz and Jacques Verbeek as depicted below.

Although conservators are familiar with the use of plastic foils and the problems they can present, we know very little about the degradation of these foils or what causes them to shrink, warp, bubble or even weep. In most cases, we don't even know their composition or the composition of the adhesives used. And to make the situation more complicated: manufacturers constantly adapt their recipes and change constituents. To better understand the degradation of plastic foils used in the animation artwork in the collection of EYE, we now survey the whole collection looking for patterns. During an expert meeting on the inventory of damages in archives and libraries organized by Metamorfoze, we learned Het Nieuwe Instituut, the national institute for architecture, design and digital culture in Rotterdam, is coping with similar problems. In many of their technical drawings and artist impressions, self-adhesive plastic foils are used as in integral part of the design. Curious after the ways in which these foils have been used in technical drawings and the specific problems these drawings present, we took a look in the architecture archives in the collection of Het Nieuwe Instituut.

A detail (upper right corner) of the plastic foil in the cel depicted above, showing the exposed adhesive layer along the edges photographed through a stereo-microscope. This can be a result of shrinkage of the foil and/or cold flow of the adhesive.

Self-adhesive plastic foils in architectural designs

When self-adhesive plastic foils came on the market shortly after the Second Word War, they were immediately embraced by architects. With these plastic foils architects could quickly achieve an even colourful fill of the architectural elements in their design drawings. The foils gave an idea of surface quality such as transparency, texture or colour. Moreover, transparent foils could be used in designs on tracing paper or transparent plastic sheest, which permitted their copying by photomechanical processes in which a degree of translucency is often desired. But above all, their textures and colours appealed to the designers and architects of the time.

Plastic foils, in short, were the equivalent of Adobe’s paint bucket throughout the second half of the 20th century. Brands such as ASLAN®, Pantone™ and Zip-a-tone™ offered a huge variety in opaque, transparent and patterned foils. The designer would cut to measure and (usually) paste the foil on the verso of the transparent paper allowing a more fluent integration into the drawing on the recto.

A beautiful example are the designs for the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (1963-1971) by Rietveld, Van Dillen en Van Tricht. The studio used transparent and patterned foils to emphasise the different volumes and the play between inside and outside.

Typical damage caused by storage in rolls and tubes

The drawings show damage and degradarion phenomena that are typical for self-adhesive foils: wrinkling and the presence of air bubbles between the substrate and the film. These bubbles are comparable to those we found in the animation artwork shown above, but their elongated shape and predominantly vertical orientation suggest a different cause. Plus they all seem to originate in a corner of the cut out shape.

Architecture archives are often characterised by the large size of the technical drawings they contain. The example above is relatively small (ca. A1), but drawings longer than two metres are no exception. Often these drawings were stored rolled and the small drawings were simply rolled together with the larger drawings, using the roll or a cardboard tube as an archival unit. Many damage patterns we now encounter in architectural drawings are an immediate result of handling or storage in rolls. The drawings by Rietveld, Van Dillen en Van Tricht are an example of these damage patterns. When rolled with the plastic foil on the inside, the foil is compressed and starts to butt at the weakest points: the corners.

Most of the damage occurs during the formation of the archive in the architecture studio. When they arrive in Het Nieuwe Instituut, these drawings are ideally unrolled or unfolded, flattened and stored flat in archival folders, in which they are interleaved with thin, archival quality silk tissue paper. Unfortunately - as a result of the size of the archives and the limited financial resources of institutions such as Het Nieuwe Instituut – conservators cope with backlogs and many architectural drawings are still kept folded or in rolls waiting for an opportunity to rehouse them

By Aafke Weller, paper conservator and researcher at EYE Film Museum for the research project Materials in Motion